| |
| AS one who cons at evening o’er an album all alone, | |
| And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, | |
| So I turn the leaves of fancy, till in shadowy design | |
| I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine. | |
| |
| The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, | 5 |
| As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes, | |
| And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke | |
| Its fate with my tobacco, and to vanish with the smoke. | |
| |
| ’T is a fragrant retrospection—for the loving thoughts that start | |
| Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart; | 10 |
| And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— | |
| When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine. | |
| |
| Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings, | |
| The voices of my children, and the mother as she sings, | |
| I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme | 15 |
| When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream. | |
| |
| In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm | |
| To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm— | |
| For I find an extra flavor in Memory’s mellow wine | |
| That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine. | 20 |
| |
| A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace, | |
| Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the vase; | |
| And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes | |
| As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies. | |
| |
| I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress | 25 |
| She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress | |
| With the written declaration that, “as surely as the vine | |
| Grew round the stump,” she loved me—that old sweetheart of mine. | |
| |
| And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand, | |
| As we used to talk together of the future we had planned— | 30 |
| When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do | |
| But write the tender verses that she set the music to: | |
| |
| When we should live together in a cosy little cot, | |
| Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, | |
| Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine, | 35 |
| And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine: | |
| |
| When I should be her lover forever and a day, | |
| And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray; | |
| And we should be so happy that when either’s lips were dumb | |
| They would not smile in Heaven till the other’s kiss had come. * * * * * | 40 |
| But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair, | |
| And the door is softly opened, and—my wife is standing there; | |
| Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign | |
| To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine. | |
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